Be forewarned: the following is a distilled version of my master’s thesis. Over the years I’ve studied theology, I’ve hunted for those reasons both experiential and philosophical that folks believe in a perfectly loving, knowing, and powerful God, even in the muck and mire of ubiquitous suffering. I’ve longed to find a solution to this supreme puzzle, as to why people came to believe in the existence of a singular God, and how we can possibly begin to maintain this belief while hurtling through space and time on a piece of rock in a seemingly limitless universe. While I will always hold that no real satisfying answers can be had, methinks that the origins of radical monotheism in the Judeo-Christian tradition might give us a clue to all this, or at least a means for understanding the craziness that is theism in a cosmos so ridiculously vast, so apparently indifferent, and so wildly inhospitable to organic life.
The Polytheistic Origins of Ancient Israel and Jewish Belief
A careful reading of the Bible reveals that the peoples of Judah and Israel did not always maintain an explicit monotheism throughout their history. The Hebrew Bible’s authors scattered veiled and not-so-veiled references to the polytheistic and henotheistic 1 origins of Israelite belief throughout its diverse literatures. Take 2 Kings 23:4-6 (NRSV), for example, in which King Josiah purges the Jerusalem Temple of idols to gods other than YHWH. Take note, especially, of reference to Baal (the primary Canaanite deity) and Asherah (who was believed by the Israelites in certain periods to be the female consort of YHWH).
The king commanded the high priest Hilkiah, the priests of the second order, and the guardians of the threshold, to bring out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven; he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron, and carried their ashes to Bethel. He deposed the idolatrous priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained to make offerings in the high places at the cities of Judah and around Jerusalem; those also who made offerings to Baal, to the sun, the moon, the constellations, and all the host of the heavens. He brought out the image of Asherah from the house of the Lord, outside Jerusalem, to the Wadi Kidron, burned it at the Wadi Kidron, beat it to dust and threw the dust of it upon the graves of the common people.This passage from Jeremiah 7:16-18 contains a reference to the “queen of heaven,” which might very well be a reference to Asherah, the female deity:
As for you, do not pray for this people, do not raise a cry or prayer on their behalf, and do not intercede with me, for I will not hear you. Do you not see what they are doing in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods, to provoke me to anger.Throughout much of their history, although the Israelites by and large held belief that YHWH remained their patronal deity, they certainly believed that gods other than YHWH existed. English translations of the Hebrew Bible render the word Elohim to be the general term for “God,” whereas the tetragrammaton -- YHWH, roughly translated as “I am Who am” -- is rendered as LORD; speaking the Divine Name presents an impossible blasphemy, and thus Jews speak the title Adonai, or Lord, when YHWH appears in the text. When Moses asks the burning bush the name of the deity speaking to him, our prophet supreme essentially inquires as to which deity he converses with. And the bush responds with a proper name: YHWH. In short, when you read a passage in which God states, “I, the Lord [insert phrase here]”, it’s akin to the Divine introducing any given statement with His/Her personal name. By contrast, the word Elohim is a plural version of the singular word El; it literally means “gods,” conjuring up the image of a divine pantheon, and this etymology hints at the originally poly- and henotheistic roots of ancient Near Eastern religion. Whenever you see “God” in the Hebrew Bible, it’s a translation of Elohim, and serves as a more general term for the Divine.
The Prophetic Struggle with Henotheism
Strewn throughout the prophetic corpus are condemnations of idolatry and allegiance to foreign gods, to deities other than YHWH. The prophets strongly proclaim that the immanent destructions of Israel and Judah by the Assyrian and Babylonian empires, respectively, directly result from the Temple’s caretakers permitting idols to infiltrate this most sacred of spaces where Heaven met earth. Foreign idols came to surround the throne of YHWH at the Temple’s heart, and the wealthy Temple elites exploited the weakest in order to extract the requisite resources to pay tribute to these idols.
It was during the single most catastrophic event in the history of Israel and Judah -- their exiles -- that radical monotheism came to revolutionize the theological imagination of ancient Israel. This newfound theology asserted that YHWH was not just the patronal deity with whom Israel existed in relationship, but that YHWH was in fact the only god who even existed. Our hero in this revolutionary and reactionary development is the anonymous prophet responsible for chapters 40-55 of the text known as Isaiah.
The authors of prophetic literature maintained their activity throughout various stages of these climactic and disastrous ruinations of Israel and Judah. Some prophets wrote from the northern kingdom of Israel, some from the southern kingdom of Judah; some prophetic texts emerged before these exiles, some emerged during exile, and some only came into existence following liberation2 from exile. Three distinct sections comprise the entirety of Isaiah, corresponding to these three historical periods: the original prophet, active in Judah in the years leading up to the Babylonian Exile, scribed the first thirty-nine chapters, a second anonymous prophet (though certainly in continuity with his predecessor) is responsible for chapters 40 through 55, and the return home to Judah and Jerusalem prompted a third prophet to produce the book’s final chapters.
And it is within the body of chapters known as Second Isaiah, or Deutero-Isaiah, of the text’s corpus, that radical monotheism bursts forth from the deepest abyss of this existential crisis. The following are several passages that assert the revolution of exclusive monotheism.
Isaiah 43:9-15
Let all the nations gather together,Isaiah 44:6-8
and let the peoples assemble.
Who among them declared this,
and foretold to us the former things?
Let them bring their witnesses to justify them,
and let them hear and say, “It is true.”
You are my witnesses, says the Lord,
and my servant whom I have chosen,
so that you may know and believe me
and understand that I am he.
Before me no god was formed,
nor shall there be any after me.
I, I am the Lord,
and besides me there is no savior.
I declared and saved and proclaimed,
when there was no strange god among you;
and you are my witnesses, says the Lord.
I am God, and also henceforth I am He;
there is no one who can deliver from my hand;
I work and who can hinder it?
Thus says the Lord,
your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:
For your sake I will send to Babylon
and break down all the bars,
and the shouting of the Chaldeans will be turned to lamentation.
I am the Lord, your Holy One,
the Creator of Israel, your King.
Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel,Isaiah 45:20-23
and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts:
I am the first and I am the last;
besides me there is no god.
Who is like me? Let them proclaim it,
let them declare and set it forth before me.
Who has announced from of old the things to come?
Let them tell us what is yet to be.
Do not fear, or be afraid;
have I not told you from of old and declared it?
You are my witnesses!
Is there any god besides me?
There is no other rock; I know not one.
Assemble yourselves and come together,
draw near, you survivors of the nations!
They have no knowledge—
those who carry about their wooden idols,
and keep on praying to a god
that cannot save.
Declare and present your case;
let them take counsel together!
Who told this long ago?
Who declared it of old?
Was it not I, the Lord?
There is no other god besides me,
a righteous God and a Savior;
there is no one besides me.
Turn to me and be saved,
all the ends of the earth!
For I am God, and there is no other.
By myself I have sworn,
from my mouth has gone forth in righteousness
a word that shall not return:
“To me every knee shall bow,
every tongue shall swear.”
The Theological Purpose of Monotheism: A Profound Theodicy
The question of why God permits innocent suffering is the problem par excellence for theists, and innumerable theodicies -- that is, answers to this question -- have arisen throughout the history of Judeo-Christianity. There is no response that satisfies either the heart or the intellect. If such an answer did exist, all would have no choice in matters of belief save for theism.3 All a theist can do in the face of the potential and total meaninglessness is choose to believe, and choose to seek redemption in the midst of suffering.
With Jerusalem and her beloved Temple in ruins, it would seem an absurdity that monotheism would emerge. How much easier it would be for Deutero-Isaiah to simply submit that YHWH had succumbed to stronger gods. And yet, much to the contrary of what one might expect, Isaiah does not choose to forsake YHWH, or to abandon theism altogether. He instead responds to suffering with a theological assertion: all things exist within the providence of a singular and almighty God.4 His radical monotheism is nothing less than a theodicy, a response to the existential crisis that was the Exile. The fires billowing from the ruins of Jerusalem would be the funeral pyre of henotheism, forging the monotheistic impulse that would forever after define the Abrahamic traditions.
Now, there’s a profound theological lesson here, and here’s what we can take away from all this seemingly irrelevant history and tracing of theological development. Deutero-Isaiah grappled with the most offensive of all possible tragedies (loss of sacred space, loss of home, and loss of life), and given the universal nature of this stuff, any of our own sufferings might very well resonate with his own exposition of this experience. He offered his contemporaries a revolutionary new insight into the nature of the Divine: not only will YHWH remain their God -- in spite (or even because of!) any missteps they make -- but YHWH is in fact the only God to whom they can pay allegiance. One must either prostrate oneself before YHWH or choose to forsake the notion of divinity altogether. In order to respond to the infinite heartbreak that comes with unfathomable suffering, perhaps it does not serve us to probe potential reasons as to why our God permits our pain. Such questioning, though necessary, will conclusively devolve into despair if indulged endlessly. Perhaps the best of all possible responses is to reassert our belief in a God of love and goodness and power that do not predicate themselves upon any antecedent criteria. We can risk our lives on belief in a God of unconditional love while facing the blackest abyss of potential absurdity. In voicing and practicing this belief, creating beauty from unimaginable evil becomes possible. In no other way can this be done.
Reading the prophet two and a half millennia later, we can feel his deep heartbreak, his unwavering enthusiasm, his trepidation and tension and joy. And all of it, every single word and phrase, should rattle us. The nature of prophetic literature is such that it cannot help but to unsettle and to disturb. It shook its ancient listeners out of their complacency, and should we permit it to do so, it will affect us similarly. Deutero-Isaiah’s brilliance forces itself upon its 21st century readers, even so many years after its original bearer spoke his words to whatever audience stood before him. I, for one, cannot even begin to imagine the dreadful impact he had on his hearers, nor can I pretend to comprehend the joy with which they received his words of consolation. A deep tension inheres within every line of his poetry, humming with the message of monotheism that it seeks to impart.
1 Henotheism refers to the practice in ascribing allegiance to one particular deity over and above other gods; think of the Greeks who had cults dedicated to certain gods among their veritable pantheon.↩
2 To be a bit more accurate here, the kingdom of Israel never recovered, whereas Judah returned to her homeland once Persia came onto the scene and conquered Babylonia.↩
3 Then again, I speak of a very particular kind of theism here: the problem of evil only exists if God is perfectly good, loving, and knowing. Polytheistic religions, or religions that do not believe in the absolute perfection of God, have no real qualms with innocent suffering.↩
4 I know that my own theological position regarding suffering (see my post on Original Freedom and Suffering) does not quite cohere with Deutero-Isaiah here, but the entire text offers concrete reasons as to why the Exile occurred: the political and religious establishment of the Temple had been treating the anawim with wild and reckless cruelty in order to serve other gods. Hence, this destruction had been well on its way and by no means is this an instance of innocent suffering.↩
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